Jake Wallis Simons (@JakeWSimons) is a Telegraph features writer, novelist and broadcaster. His website is jakewallissimons.com. Follow him on Facebook here and on Twitter here. His fourth novel, Jam, which is set in a traffic jam on the M25, is out now.

Piped music is the scourge of modernity

On Friday evening I dined at the Chesil Rectory in Winchester, a restaurant which I hadn't been to before. It occupies the oldest house in the city – a 15th Century affair comprised of low doors, sagging beams and wood fires – and has a sterling reputation.

Both food and service, I'm pleased to say, lived up to it. As did the drink (a very nice Argentinian Pinot Grigio). These, however, were grossly overshadowed by an abomination which was both pernicious and deeply offensive, and no less so for its ubiquity in our society. You guessed it: piped music.

It was a sort of Eighties pop track of indefinite origin, with big, strummy guitars and an insistent melody. As I tried to focus on the menu, the noise insinuated itself into my brain, fracturing my chain of thought and leaving me with disembodied nuggets of sentences floating in a guitar-saturated ether. The pheasant as a starter but where would I go from there? . . . Can't stand puy lentils . . . Lamb might be a bit heavy . . . Pheasant . . . lentils . . . lamb . . . And to drink? . . . Pheasant . . .

Not only was this inane tune an insult to diners, it cheapened the dignity of the restaurant. It also, for that matter, presented an effrontery to the distinguished building. When the waitress came over, I couldn't help but complain (to the embarrassment of my wife). To the waitress' credit, she wasted no time in turning the muzak off, and the rest of the evening went off wonderfully.

There is no better accompaniment to a meal than the gentle swell of human conversation. Likewise a spell reading in a café, or browsing in a shop, or on public transport. Yet in almost every enclosed public space these days we are subjected to such aural assaults as the aforementioned Eighties tune. As Stephen Fry put it, "piped water, piped oil, piped gas – but never piped music." Or as Joanna Lumley said, "I have left shops unable to browse at leisure – and indeed buy anything at all – simply because of the piped music."

These quotations are taken from the website of Pipedown, a Salisbury-based pressure group seeking to eradicate this cancer from our world, which is supported by both Fry and Lumley. The group has had important victories, such as over Lloyds Pharmacy (who have stopped piped music altogether), Nationwide Building Society, and Gatwick airport (ditto). They continue to "fight the insidious menace" on many fronts, including in hospitals, where people are "powerless to escape".

The Pipedown website contains a cornucopia of useful facts related to piped music. Did you know, for instance, that a Sunday Times poll established that 17 per cent of Britons cite piped music as "the single thing they most detested about modern life"? This made it the third most-hated thing in Britain, behind two other types of noise. Did you know that research has shown that playing piped music made blood donors more nervous before the act, and more depressed afterwards? And did you know that 86 per cent of people with hearing problems hate piped music?

An associate of mine, who shall remain nameless, has an audacious and effective technique for stopping this evil. He simply declares that he suffers from epilepsy, and that piped music triggers an attack. Below the belt, of course, and unlikely to further the cause as a whole. But as a last resort? Pretty good, I reckon. After all, it works.

Piped music is a menace which must be confronted and destroyed once and for all. Never mind stepping in dog poo; piped music is siphoning poo into our brains all the time. It is high time we united in protest, and stood firm against the tyranny of muzak.